How it's going as a trans person in Florida: Planned Parenthood, 26Health, and Spektrum Health have announced they have paused all gender affirming care.

To recap, DeSantis signed several anti-trans bills into law this week. Care is banned for minors, care is all but banned for adults, Don't Say Gay has been extended, children can be kidnapped from affirming parents by non-affirming family, and there is a bathroom bill that subjects trans folks to arrest for using government owned facilities, such as those in courthouses, airports, many stadiums and parks.

The adult effective ban was felt immediately. The main elements are:

Currently, it is unknown if existing HRT prescriptions written by NPs will be honored by pharmacies. I personally know one person who was able to pick up testosterone yesterday, but I have also read many reports of folks being denied. I myself don't have a refill ready for another 10 days and will report back after I try my own pickup.

What's additionally dangerous is those of us, myself included, who get non-HRT prescriptions from our gender clinics now face the uncertainty of continuing of *all* of our medical care. Our health clinics are at risk of shuttering permanently as they lose major income, and many of us will lose STD meds, depression meds, heart meds, etc, etc.

When we say "this will kill us," it goes beyond suicide risk from forced detransition.

"But you can still get HRT from a physician."

So many suck or are outright hostile and the demand outstrips the supply. Before I found my NP-run clinic, one physician just decided to not call in my Rx, another was so shit at reading lab results, he thought I had hepatitis, and the third I had to threaten to kick in the teeth for trying to force too large a speculum in me.

Also, the state-required consent form has not been finalized and distributed yet, so at this point, everything has pretty much ground to a halt.

It was estimated that 80% of trans adults would lose their healthcare because of how many use providers like Planned Parenthood, but the impact seems even greater now.

"You can get your non-gender care elsewhere still."

DeSantis recently signed a bill that allows healthcare professionals to discriminate against trans people.

Sure, we can try to find care elsewhere, but it will be a slow and expensive process, with no guarantees. It took me over 20 years to get my heart condition treated because of transphobic doctors.

What can I do as a trans Floridian?

Stay in communication with your clinic - many are working on getting physicians added to the roster to prescribe HRT. Lawsuits are being filed and it's possible the changes to adult care can be rolled back.

Continue to try to pick up your meds, but begin looking for care elsewhere, though. Inside and outside the state.

Remember that while telemed for gender affirming care has been banned, you can still cross state lines for care. See Erin's map of informed consent clinics.

Many people will turn to DIY, but be sure you are aware of the risks here, especially if on testosterone, which is a controlled substance.

What should I be worried about next as a trans Floridian?

I worry about the following next steps towards genocide:

These all have historic precedence and are huge "I'm in danger" red flags.

What can I do as a cis person?

Amplify all this news. Talk frankly about how this is genocide. And donate what you can to trans mutual aid campaigns so people can travel to get healthcare or even leave the state.

Here's some articles to get started on building awareness:

Take care, everyone, of yourself and each other.

URGENT!!! Trans woman just got deported, now in immigration hell.

Hi everyone, I just spent the last few years trying to get asylum in a small eastern european country on the grounds of transphobic persecution. I failed at that, and am now struggling to regain what stability I had there.

The warning I had of my deportation was not enough to do all the necessary immigration paperwork for what comes next. As a result, I now have to retreat to a third party country for a month while I do that paperwork.

In short, I need money for immigration paperwork.

Please don't stop support just because the deportation itself already happened. This is still a crucial period! I am not safe!

0/1800$

paypal/ko-fi link

no donations and not a lotta notes. makin me real nervous

after four days of no donations today pulled in $112. here's hoping it's a sign of things to come

$152. lot of notes last night! fingers crossed!

Which is why it’s important to not be mean.

Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.

I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.

It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.

It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.

They are not your enemy. They are victims.

They aren't being sent out to actually convert people, they are being sent out hoping that they will be harassed and treated poorly so they view those outside the cult as dangerous and evil and stick to the safety of the familiar group.

You being mean to some teenager isn't sticking it to anyone, you're doing exactly what their church elders want to happen.

PLEASE READ THIS.

Please read this.

Don't do the church's work for them.

yeah as an ex-mormon and former missionary i can confirm, the whole premise of the cult thing is to isolate people and convince them that the outside world is big and scary and mean, and make them feel like the only place they're safe and accepted and can relate to anyone is within social spaces controlled by the cult.

full-time missionaries (the young folks in office clothes wandering the streets trying to talk to people) are like the extreme level of that. all mormons are constantly expected to be trying to convert people around them (and getting rejected because nobody else wants to join their incredibly oppressive and unappealing church). but with missionaries, it's literally just non-stop high-intensity no-breaks indoctrination and self-torture, all day every day for 2 years straight. (again, take it from me, i've been through it firsthand.)

the whole point is to drill it into them SO THOROUGHLY that the world hates them, that they carry that trauma for the rest of their lives, and ideally pass it on to their children too (since the way the organization ACTUALLY increases its numbers is by encouraging members to have a ton of kids and raise them within the church).

you don't have to listen to their talking points. you don't have to indulge their weird off-the-cuff personal questions. you definitely don't have to agree to sit down with them for "lessons" about their religion. but you SHOULD try to be kind to them. sooner or later they WILL figure out that people can be kind and good without being mormons, and it'll happen a lot faster if you don't reinforce their notion that anyone who lacks "the gospel" is a grouchy rude asshole who hates them.

obviously circumstances may vary! avoid them entirely if you're the type who worries about saying no to people, or getting roped into things, or you don't feel safe doing/saying anything that might encourage a stranger to engage with you in conversation. i get it! i know the kinds of tactics we were taught for approaching people and i also know how it feels to be on the receiving end. but if you CAN help them in this small way, just by setting an example of a good polite non-mormon person? please do. at the end of the day, they're just scared kids in a very bad situation and under absurd amounts of pressure, and they need all the help they can get.

I don't know whether or not this is true, but I'm reblogging this because we live in a world where the third search result when I tried researching the validity of this information was a link to an article about a weight loss product.

The second search result had included the slur "ob*se" in the title of the article.

There are seriously people who tell me fat people aren't oppressed. Meanwhile, trying to find information about how to keep a fat person from drying in a car crash is met with links to products that make dirty money off of how society views my body.

I immediately gave up trying to research this.

The tiktok is correct. Basically it's about arranging your belt so it there is an accident the pressure is in your strongest bones.

"Seatbelt should be across your hips rather than your stomach for everyone, but i think it's more common for fat people to wear seatbelts over the stomach

Pelvic bones are strong and sturdy, and you're going to be MUCH less likely to injure internal organs and such when you suddenly slam into a nylon belt"

Text and photos by @thejacespace

I wanted to put both of these reblogs in one reblog chain since this is helpful information. Thank you both for giving more information than fatphobic Google did.

I believe in the saints but not the Catholic church. God is fake but the saints could actually do all that stuff for real by coincidence.

Loving the amount of people responding to this with "god is dead but St. Anthony helps me find my keys"

“The peasant woman, wrinkled and toothless at forty, who never missed Mass, took communion, confessed, boasted of her nephew in the seminary, kissed the priest’s hand, she might tell you, if you asked, that she did not believe in God. ‘But there’s the Saints, and the holy water is a great thing,’ one such woman had said to Laura, rock-sure in her paganism.” (Ursula Le Guin, Malafrena)

Akko but Peanuts

i like them a normal amount

So I was scrolling and saw this image in an article about the European heat wave,

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

"The Sahel, for instance, has been heating at a faster pace than the global average despite being hot already. Burkina Faso and Mali, both in West Africa’s Sahel, are among countries that are set to become almost uninhabitable by 2080, if the world continues on its current trajectory, a UK university study found. Its people are especially vulnerable due to shrinking resources, such as water, and poor amenities, and a dearth of trees and parks means there are few options for places to cool off."

all across the continent of Africa, ice has been melting and not coming back. the ice caps and glaciers of every continent are vitally important for maintaining a balanced climate, but as you can see from the above image, even 10-20 years ago the ice deposits on Kilimanjaro and the Rwenzori mountains had shrunk to dangerous levels.

this is Kilimanjaro in 2023. it's only getting worse as climate change continues to ravage the globe.

because so much climate science is focused on europe and the americas, far too few know the extent of the damage that has been done to Africa by the corporations driving climate change. time and time again, the struggles across the African continent are minimised or outright ignored, because as OP said, people believe it to be a hot continent.

these heatwaves are just the tip of the iceberg. the entire western world owes it to the people living in Africa to stop the practices that are continuing to accelerate climate disaster, but billionaires and CEOs will put profit ahead of the suffering of billions of people. Africa is at the forefront of climate disaster, and any solutions for reducing or reversing climate change should be focused on how we can prevent the last African ice deposits from disappearing for good.

illus. Jiro Sasumo "Leafeon VSTAR" from Crown Zenith

Useful information

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

"All your tests/labs came back clear! Isn't that great?"

American healtcare is a business, and you are the customer. Here's something you can say:

"It's great that we ruled out X, Y, and Z with these tests. However, I'm still having these symptoms, and they're effecting my daily life in these specific ways. So what's next on your list of differential diagnoses?"

And if that doesn't get you anywhere, you can say something like:

"Okay, we've ruled out all of the common causes for my symptoms. So when do we start exploring more rare explanations?"

And if that still gets you nowhere, you're going to document their refusal to do further testing in your chart, because they don't want to have to put that in writing. Keep going, you're worth it. I love you, mean.

END VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION.]

sanrio ⭐️ osuwari retro

I ate them 

the worst is wanting to create and create and create but being trapped in a body that is so so so so tired

URGENT!!! Trans woman just got deported, now in immigration hell.

Hi everyone, I just spent the last few years trying to get asylum in a small eastern european country on the grounds of transphobic persecution. I failed at that, and am now struggling to regain what stability I had there.

The warning I had of my deportation was not enough to do all the necessary immigration paperwork for what comes next. As a result, I now have to retreat to a third party country for a month while I do that paperwork.

In short, I need money for immigration paperwork.

Please don't stop support just because the deportation itself already happened. This is still a crucial period! I am not safe!

0/1800$

paypal/ko-fi link

no donations and not a lotta notes. makin me real nervous

after four days of no donations today pulled in $112. here's hoping it's a sign of things to come

$152. lot of notes last night! fingers crossed!

Sun went pop, possible aurora on the way in a few days if anyone wanna go out and see

“They have a cave troll.”

This cat is so, so friendly and stoked to be there, though! Look at all the leaning and rubbing on people and things, the upright question mark tail; this is a very cuddly cat who wants attention, lmao. 💜